Long time no post. Mat Max here chiming in from Gisborne, NZ. It's been a fairly poor spring and summer here so far. After twelve months of banishment (a clerical error) from New Zealand in Hawaii, surf depression has pretty much ruled for the past half-year. Oh well. Six months of no boarding and pure mat riding in New Zealand is not really all that bad. PG sent me a Tracker RT to supplement my Standard addiction. The Tracker makes things easier in small to middling surf with its longer chassis and mellow rear end. However I must confess that I'm a Standard man. Maybe this is because being average in height, weight and IQ, everything sized medium fits off the rack. The RT went like a rocket on my short stint at Superbank last spring, yet I still favor the original 4GF rectangle of yore. Could be nostalgia, since I just loved the Gen 1 Flyers of the late '80s, with the exact dimensions and almost the same rounded corners as the current Standard (minus the new concave I-beam specs). Or maybe it's just liking 90 degree angles for the sake of old school cool. Nonetheless I'm hooked on the Standard like a bass on a treble. My Gen 2 hybrid Standard rode both 10' walls in Hawaii and 1' slop over there too. And here in Aotearoa it is serving perfectly in all conditions. I'm up to 175 lbs from 150 on Molokai and the Standard still performs the same. Not to diminish the qualities of the RT, which I still use half of the time with equal or better results, but I personally reckon that mats are meant to be square. Maybe I'm the square, and to be fair, the Tracker actually gets the job done better in most cases. Oh well, each to their own, and three cheers to PG for creating this delicious dilemma!!!
